Counterfeit VCDS?

GaryM said:

I've got a couple more links. Should I post them in this thread or send them to someone in a PM?

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Either way is OK. If you PM, send 'em to me.

Thanks!

-Uwe-

Devil_Inside said:

The sad thing is that the market is flooded with these counterfeit interfaces. They are even being sold on Amazon through 3rd party sellers...

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It used to be a lot worse. I remember searching in the past and you couldn't hardly get past all the "VAG 11.11" and "VAG 12.12" to find legitimate used interfaces on eBay. It seems RT has been much more effective lately pushing MOST the sales off the first-tier reputable sites like eBay and Amazon and out toward sketchy cracked-product web fronts. Unfortunately, the cracked-product web fronts will be an order of magnitude harder to suppress.

Bruce said:

Agreed. It is sad.

As this thread has said, we work to shut down the sales channels that we can shut down. And the effort to do these things take away our resources to doing things that would benefit all.

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Indeed, it sucks. I don't envy you the headaches at all. I have come to consider the RT team as friends and it genuinely pisses me off to see people steal from you. I wish I could think of more meaningful ways to help other than my long-winded bloviating on this topic as of late.

If I were you? [ Yes, here comes more unsolicited business advice from a non-business owner ] I think the next best line of attack is web search. Hire a firm to do some light SEO for the terms "VAG 11.11" and "VAG 12.12", and maybe buy some Google AdWords placement as well. In parallel with that, start DMCA bombing the search listings rather than going after the web fronts directly. The cracked-product web fronts are all over the place and often out of your legal reach. Google isn't, and they have processes to deal with this sort of thing. I'm sure Yahoo and Bing do as well.

I think you could keep the pirated clones pushed off the first few pages of search results with a very reasonable time investment, and that would deliver a ton of benefit. The next escalation after that is to start following the money and bombing credit-card / Paypal merchant accounts, but that would require making regular payments on your attorney's yacht. There might not be enough return on the investment.

Jason

Yep, that has always been the question: What's the return on investment in pursuing them? It takes both time and money do it, yet we know we'll never eliminate them. How many of the people that buy the cheap clones would actually pay for a real one if it were more difficult to find a clone? I wish I knew.

-Uwe-

The question is, is there a process to get items removed from the 40 thieves website like there is with eBay (both the main and express versions of the site) and do the items actually get removed if you report them?

I'm fairly sure that a number of people who sell on eBay and other "for sale" classified advert sites just bulk buy from 40 thieves and then sell on at a marked-up price. If the supply chain from 40 thieves could be stemmed then I reckon a number of the other downstream sources would automatically dry up as a result and thus save the task of having to pursue them.

I expect that most of those resellers are importing directly from China.

-Uwe-

We're working on it GaryM. But you are correct - it is not easy!

GaryM said:

The question is, is there a process to get items removed from the 40 thieves website like there is with eBay (both the main and express versions of the site) and do the items actually get removed if you report them?
.

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Yep, we had over 4600 listings removed last year from that site.

Uwe said:

A note about how we're moderating this thread: ...

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"VAG 11.11" cables through Amazon, from a purveyor of seemingly random crap.

Pirate users used to be given a pirate flag avatar (which was a great visual sign) but that's gone missing Uwe. Pirate threads are locked so its easier to ask this in here.